Title: Eighth Man Bound
Author: TheOtherWillow
Disclaimer: I don't own Dr. Who. Talk to the BBC.
Summary: He was only six months into his tenth regeneration, and already the nightmares were threatening to drive him mad.

Part One – A King of Infinite Space

"O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell
And count myself a king of infinite space,
Were it not that I have bad dreams." - Hamlet: II, 2

Even a Time Lord needs to sleep. Admittedly, not a fraction as much as the frail humans he regularly took on as companions, but still. Sleep was a necessity for every sentient race in existence that was still corporeal.

At this point, the Doctor was giving serious consideration to transcending into a non-corporeal form.

It would take, what? Two, three thousand years of concentrated mediation? He mused on the thought silently as he fiddled with handle of his sonic screwdriver. He tried to remember the last time he'd even heard of someone accomplishing it, but came up empty. The Dimensional Ethics Committee had always been so diligent in preventing the kind of damage that created in the Causal Nexus.

Of course, that was Before.

It wasn't as if there was anyone to stop him now, was there? Just a quick millennia or three of introspective silence and poof! Goodbye Doctor, hello one ascended being of energy surpassing the need to sleep. To dream.

The Doctor shook his head at his own folly and let the sonic screwdriver drop into one of his coat pockets. With shaking hands, he threaded his fingers through his tangled hair and leaned his elbows against the console of the TARDIS' time rotor. The counterpoint pounding of his pulses thudded against his temples as he allowed his eyelids to slip close. Surely, just a minute or two of rest wouldn't hurt?

It couldn't have been more than five seconds before he jumped up with a muffled scream. Arms pin wheeling and hearts roaring, he managed to catch himself on one of the support structures before he ended up falling to the grille floor. Hands clutched spasmodically against the TARDIS' familiar structure as he struggled to control his breath. Squeezing his lids shut, he tried to sort through the confusing jumble of images that insidiously slithered behind his eyes every time slumber beckoned:

Light that burned him, tore him, ate through him. POWER. Power like nothing he'd ever felt, ever imagined. The Power of Creation; his alone for the taking, the asking, begging to be used. "That's what I see. All the time. And doesn't it drive you mad?" A trail of destruction like nothing he'd ever left in his wake. The Oncoming Storm. The Encroaching Darkness "I am the Eighth Man Bound..." and he would travel through time and space just by thinking about it and his every movement would alter history whether he wanted to or not. His voice, falling from a dozen different lips, tickled his mind with menacing whispers, "...you're going, you're gone for ages, already gone, you're still here, just arrived, haven't even met you yet..." and another, and another, one falling after another into themselves. Blending, bending, until finally the whisper is a song, is a symphony, is a scream! And then silence. The emptiness of non-existence and a hole where the Universe should be. Not with a bang, but a whimper...

"Doctor?" Rose's voice sliced into his reverie, "Are you alright?"

His eyes snapped open to meet her concerned frown. His lips parted in an attempt to answer her, but still caught up in the memory of his nightmare, tongue and teeth refused to cooperate in forming words. She watched him gawp like a fish for a moment before crossing the room to his side.

"Doctor, talk to me," she said as she laid a hand against his chest. "What's wrong?" The thundering of his hearts struck against her palm in an offbeat staccato rhythm and his eyes held a wild look that she hadn't seen since his last regeneration. He released his death grip on the support column with one hand and used it to cover hers. He leaned forward, pushing his weight off the column with his other hand until he was so close his lips brushed the shell of her ear as he spoke.

"Do you know how rare a stable freethinking Time Lord is?" he breathed into her ear. She jerked her head back in bewilderment. "Doctor?" she queried, confusion staining her pretty features. "All the great Time Lords went mad," he told her solemnly before his eyes rolled up in his head and his body collapsed like a puppet with his strings cut. The echo of her startled yelp as the dead weight of him toppling forward thrust her to the floor reverberated throughout the console room. She was too busy at first trying to wriggle out from underneath him to notice the TARDIS had started moving.

Author Notes - Aside from the Hamlet quote at the top, I also used Dr. Who quotes from The Dying Days novel (eighth doctor, I believe), Dragonfire (seventh doctor), and the Parting of the Ways (ninth doctor). Non-quote Doctor Who research can be found on my livejournal.